Creating a delightful customer experience is one of the most important things in business.

Creating a delightful customer experience is also one of the most complex and difficult things to do in business. Doing that work is so much easier when done with partners.

The other day at a meeting of small business owners the group was asked to solve a problem. The owner of a golf club customizing business was having difficulty getting buy-in from local pro shops and clubhouses for his services. Not only was he not getting buy-in he was getting what he described as a frosty reception. The owner asked the group what else he could do to connect with his market given their primary feeding ground was often barred to him.

He got some great responses around social marketing, advertising, and alternate places he could connect with golfers.

My response?

You can’t fix stupid.

A business can either white-knuckle a peripheral revenue stream and perceived value-add or it can actually put its customers first. Creating highly customized fitted clubs is not the core product of a golf course. Providing the best possible experience on the course for its members is.

Here is a business owner with a solution for members that would improve their game and the level of delight on the course. A service, properly executed, that would create happier customers.

If you were a golfer and your pro shop brought in someone who could improve your enjoyment, and even shave a few strokes off your game, would you be delighted? Would you think a smart strategic alliance like that was a great idea?

Would you be pleased your pro shop and course management had explored things like commissions, referral fees, revenue sharing, exclusivity arrangements, co-marketing, members-only events? Because that would be a creative way to arrive at a win-win-win solution right? The course, the club fitter, and the members all win.

Would you believe the managers running that course when they said they put members first?

What about if you learned instead of inviting that specialist in, they actively blocked him from the club, events, and pro shop because they saw him as a competitor? We don’t care if this benefits to our members, and set us apart as a course, we don’t need the competition in club sales. End of conversation.